Dag nabbit! I tried this Irish-themed tea too late for Saint Patrick’s day! That is so disappointing! I love a theme!

Unlike my timing, this tea is NOT a disappointment. It’s a potato pancake flavored Darjeeling with vanilla and honey. Sounds cool, right?

In my home, we call potato pancakes “latkes,” but I doubt that’s what the Irish call it. My brother dumps cheese and salt into his latkes — but it appears that the Irish take a sweeter route.

This flavor tends more toward butter and cream. It’s very sweet, smooth on the tongue. It also has a robust Irish darjeeling base keeping it on track.

It feels like a liquefied hangover-breakfast. You’ve got the tough tea with your fried carbs to re-fuel your body. (The fried carbs, in this story, are obviously made by someone else. Someone who made better decisions than you did last night.)

Judging by how sweet and yummy this tea is, if it were me (and I’ve been there), I’d dive right in to such a meal. I’d eat it until there was nothing left and whine for more.

"Hey, everybody! I'm Leah, a graphic designer from Pennsylvania, United States. I live with my husband and rescue mutt in a house with colorful walls. I love fonts, colors, animals, flowers, novels, illustration, geeking out, and -- obviously! -- tea. I've only been heavily into tea for about a year, but I've found I tend to prefer loose blended black dessert teas. I normally drink them hot western style without anything added; if I add in some vanilla almond milk or honey, I promise I'll mention it! When I'm not blogging here, I'm blogging at leahlucci.com/starling or posting to Instagram (super_starling), so come say hi!"

So, I have to say this first: the piggy sprinkles are DEATH-DEFYINGLY cute! (I think that’s a thing?) Also, I appreciate the fact that this is an extra-punny tea: not only is the name a pun, but the tea itself is both figgy AND filled with sugar-based figgy piglets. (Yes, the sprinkles do absorb fig flavor over time. I checked.)

Although you can smell the sweet flavor of figs through the packet, it gets even better while steeping. After steeping, the tea is a nice hazy cedarish amber color. The overall taste is a bit less figgy than I expected from the smell, though the flavor does build up towards the end of each sip. This tea is sweet enough to not need sugar, although it’s good with sugar too! And it’s quite smooth, with no more than a teeny hint of astringency.

For best flavor, I recommend adding a pinch of sugar and some milk (but you know me, I recommend that for basically all teas). I also recommend using generous amounts of leaf. The first time I sampled this tea, I used a heaping teaspoonful for about 10 oz of water. I tried it and found myself wondering if it would be even better in a stronger infusion, so the next time I tried two heaping teaspoonfuls in about 8oz of water and found the flavor much improved. Again, it’s a matter of taste, so go with your instincts and feel free to experiment!

I really enjoyed drinking down my sample of this tea, and it’s made me consider adding a figgy tea to my regular rotation. (I’m also considering buying some of this tea as a Christmas present for my little sister. It’s both cute and yummy, and thus it’s likely to be an instant little-sister favorite.) If you’re a serious fig fan, you might have to steep this tea especially strong to get as much fruit flavor as you’d like; still, if you’re looking for a nicely fig-flavored black tea with the cutest sprinkles EVER, this is most certainly THE one for you.

Hi! My name is Tabitha and I'm an uprooted PNW native living in the South with my husband and my cocker spaniel.
My favorite teas are usually dark and strong and go well with milk and sugar. I like to combine tea-drinking with all of my favorite activities, such as listening to music, reading YA fiction, knitting, and writing blog and website content for businesses. Because I'm a well-rounded person, I also have other interests, such as wearing mismatched socks and pretending to be ambidextrous.

Today is finally the day! I have had so many new teas to try lately and because of a pesky cold I couldn’t taste any of them. However, the cold is finally (mostly gone) and I can taste tea once again!

Before I get to the taste of this particular tea, I want to talk about the adorable dry leaf. Falling Leaves is definitely accurate because the cute little leaf sprinkles among the rooibos leaves actually looks like an Autumn leaf pile. It is quite fun and makes me that much more excited to start sipping.

Speaking about exciting, the maple smell that fills the air as soon as the water hits those little leafy sprinkles is mouthwatering. Even the dry leaf has a great maple scent.

That maple does transfer to the taste of the tea as well, albeit not as strong as it is in scent. Unfortunately it gets slightly muddled among the sugar sweetness of the melted sprinkles. In addition, the rooibos base is adding a sort of honey-like flavor which is just adding yet another layer of sweet with a slight bit of wood lurking around the bottom of the sip. With that said, that woody component helps balance the other flavors and keep it from becoming cloying. It is smooth and dessert-like but I just find myself wanting a more concentrated maple flavor as opposed to the collection of sweets I am getting here. As a whole, it is coming off more generic than maple.

This is the same issue I had with the very similar blend, Oh Canada! by DAVIDsTEA. The two teas are very similar, though the DAVIDs tea had a stronger rooibos base from what I can recall. In light of this comparison, it would be interesting to see how this blend fares cold brewed which was my preferred method for prepping Oh Canada

All in all, this is by no means a bad blend just a little lackluster when compared to the decadent smell. However, if you are looking for a nice and gentle sweet tea, you will find it here.

Here’s the scoop!

Leaf Type: Herbal/Rooibos

Description

This an outstanding seasonal blend is a festive combination of rooibos tea and rich maple flavor! Colorful sprinkles add to the fun. Enjoy this on cool fall and winter evenings. It’ll warm you right up, and make you smile!

Hey there! My name is Rachel. I’m a twenty-something from Toronto, Ontario, Canada who loves dogs and has a bit of an obsession with tea. As a child I hated the stuff since all I ever knew was Red Rose (no offense to Red Rose). However, a few years ago that all changed. I was on a diet and desperate for new flavors without adding calories and that’s when I turned to tea. I started off by going to DAVIDsTEA and Teavana for all their dessert-inspired flavors, and since I didn’t know any better, I bought 100 grams each of about twenty-something different teas. This was okay for the teas I liked but for those I didn’t I needed to find some way of getting rid of them.
Enter Steepster.com. This is where I met some incredible tea friends, discovered tea swaps, and learned of so many amazing tea companies. My desire to try all the teas grew and since joining three years ago I have tried over a thousand different teas. I have learned what ingredients I love and I have learned what flavors I don’t like. I determined my go-to brewing method is Western-style with no added milk or sweeteners, though I also enjoy cold brewing, iced teas, teapops, lattes, and smoothies. I have yet to brew gong-fu style but I hope to do so just as soon as I get the proper teaware to do it.
About a year ago, I actually stopped drinking tea but as my stash of over 200 teas started aging I decided I needed to respark my interest. I chose to take a 365 days of tea challenge on Instagram in which I post a new tea picture every day. So far it has been rather successful as I find myself drinking (and buying) more and more tea each day. Plus it enabled CuppaGeek to find me and invite me here to SororiTea Sisters.